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Victoria Ruzvidzo Business Focus
Compliments of the season dear readers! I sincerely hope and pray you have started the year on a good footing and that what lies ahead for all us in the year will make us better individuals, better companies and a better nation.This may sound incongruent to the situation on the ground given the cash challenges, company closures, unemployment and unjustifiably high prices for goods and services that confront the nation today but don’t they say a rough sea makes a great captain.

Certainly in crisis lies opportunity. The fact that we have started the year on a rather challenging note does not preclude better prospects in the year. But realistically, the work is cut out for us and we just have to make it happen.

It is a fact that the times are tough for the majority of Zimbabweans. It is yet another fact that many are struggling to pay school fees or to buy uniforms in preparation for the new term that begins next week.

It has also been substantiated  that despite the cancellation of outstanding domestic water bills and a portion of electricity bills last year, a benevolent gesture by  the Government by the way, the figures reflecting non-payment since then are rising because to many, the money just is not there.

It’s true that farmers are converting truckloads of tomatoes into manure as demand is low at the marketplace. It is not further from the truth that families can hardly afford three meals in a day.

These are basic issues that the Government needs to be seized with presently. There is urgent need that the Zanu-PF election manifesto and the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) be implemented with greater resolve so that we start seeing the results.

The success or otherwise of any programme is judged purely on results and the generality of Zimbabweans critically need tangible positive results that will become manifest in the various facets of their lives.

People are generally more concerned about mere bread and butter issues almost literally. Greater impetus should thus be put by all stakeholders in addressing these fundamental needs. The solutions to all these challenges reside within us.

We have the resources, the capability and certainly the motivation to get things going.

We have diamonds, gold, platinum, fertile soil and skills and a whole list of resources that can transform this economy into a powerhouse.
More accountability is expected this year as we premise economic transformation more on local resources than foreign help. Every dollar earned from these resources needs to be accounted for if we are to effectively transform the economy.

This year is the first full year for Zim Asset implementation hence we must make significant progress.

The four pillars on which the programme is anchored have the potential to address the bulk of the many challenges that afflict the economy today.

The policy must be understood by the population in terms of language and orientation. This will entail the buy-in that will fuel its implementation and hence success.

We must incessantly ask ourselves what we are doing at individual, corporate and national level to ensure sustainable socio-economic transformation.

We need to have the right mindset, understanding, belief and drive to take the economy out of the present quagmire.

We need to align our priorities to our goals as Government and broadly as a country to ensure we attain that which we must.

A company which seeks superior results but with no supporting systems in place is delusional. Same applies to any setting. At a basic level, a family which seeks to buy a car but does not save towards its purchase will not acquire the asset.

The year typically starts with lofty goals for most but ends on a tragic note with nothing to show for it. The problem clearly being an acute lack of follow-through. Any ardent golfer will testify to the importance of follow-through when taking a shot.

Doing the same thing and expecting different results is folly of the highest order. Things certainly need to be done differently this year.

We need to keep eyes focused on our targets and goals and ensure there are proper plans in place to achieve them.
We need to avoid too many talk shows as the expense of deliver. Too many meetings are a sheer waste of resources. More action is what will make the difference.

Of course present challenges have the danger of sapping energy but let us deliberately choose to dwell on how we can better the situation instead of lamenting  the predicament.

Things have to get better and it is our collective responsibility to bring about the Zimbabwe we envisage.

Below is one of the responses I received on my instalment on the cash challenges faced by banks.

“Dear Ruzvidzo, thank you for the above instalment in today’s Herald newspaper.

For years I have been a follower of your business and social analytical articles .

In an era where virtues of nation building are rare your passion and desire to see motherland prosper is admirable.  I commend you about this.

Coming back to today’s article, I quickly had to go through it because I was so eager to confirm what lies behind the symptoms manifest as Cash crunch.

While I agree with you on everything else I beg to differ where you propose that ‘most queues will disappear once we use more of cards’.
Zimbabwe’s current challenges are far beyond plastic money  Vickie.

The use of plastic money is a mere convenience tool that need to be plugged to a functioning economy in order to work.

If the economy is in doldrums as a result of lack of production, sanctions, corruption and other impediments  to suggest plastic money as a solution becomes frivolous to say the least. To highlight my argument consider what has happened to me:

Our business has been banking with bank X (name with held for professional reasons) for the past many years. Since last month we have not been able to get any cash from our account and the bank officials were telling us it was because there was no ‘cash’. We said to ourselves that’s simple! We opened a new account with CABS and approached bank X for an RTGS to CABS but this time around we were told there is no money for the bank to transfer to CABS. Further, bank X is now not participating on plastic money enabling  platform including ZimSwitch.

One thing for certain is that the above experience has got nothing to do with the use of plastic money but a deep seated disfunctionality within the economy.

I am not an economist nor a financial guru but I am certain that when our clients deposited  some money into our account at Metbank the bank had better use for that money than paying us on demand.

The seriousness of our situation requires us to come up with serious solutions. T

The nation desperately looks up to people like you for these but we get hopeless to realise you too could be sharing the common man’s confusion.

As Zimbabweans I think we are too educated on issues that are far removed from our context and when challenged to proffer relevant solutions we misfire!

In my opinion, the reason why we are is these difficulties is simply because we are not working as a nation. There is no production on the farms and our industrial areas are ghost towns all over.

Instead of young persons working in the farms producing horticultural items for export, we see battalions of youths spending idle hours on the streets sometimes selling juice cards and other trinkets.

Others are into cross-border trade often bringing back home second hand clothing for resale. In the midst of all this we see an unquenchable desire to get rich quickly and a rampant subtle taste for high life  whose by product is corruption.”
In God I Trust!

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